Defy the Worlds

by Claudia Gray

  “Yeah, I’m awesome.” She kicks back, folding her lanky arms behind her head. “I’m bad at false modesty, so I figure, why bother?”

  “Entirely rational.” Abel’s never seen the point of modesty either.

  “Here’s the kicker,” Virginia says, pointing to a glowing column of data. “Shearer’s part of a small group of neo-transhumanists.”

  Abel frowns. Transhumanism—the belief that humans can adapt chemical and/or biomechanical additions to their bodies to become superhuman—was largely abandoned in the mid-twenty-first century. While the philosophy is an understandable development from the human ego, the reality fell far short due to tissue rejection, spiking cancer rates, and unpredictable results. By the time the technology had caught up, cybernetics had taken hold, and humans no longer wished to manipulate their bodies to do what a mech could simply do for them. “Perhaps Mansfield Cybernetics intends to create such technologies.”

  “Then why get into organic mechs?” Virginia shrugs as she brings up a holo of Gillian speaking before a group. It must be some months ago, to judge by her different weight—or perhaps years, even. Gillian’s energy there makes her seem far younger. “Here, watch this.”

  “We can overcome human weakness,” Gillian says so fervently it startles him—like something out of a theatrical production rather than real life. Yet her sincerity is unmistakable. “Indeed, we must overcome it. Consciousness may have arisen from physical existence, but why should it be bound by it? We’re caged in prisons of blood and bone. Humanity must be freed!”

  Virginia snaps off the holo. “There’s a lot more in that vein—no pun intended. Nothing concrete, though, at least that I can tell.”

  Abel isn’t sure what to make of Gillian’s stranger philosophies, but he feels certain they’re linked to the organic-mech project. “I should investigate more thoroughly. You’ve already been very helpful, and I hesitate to ask for more assistance—”

  “Come on. You know I love this stuff. Besides, we’ve had a lull in our workload lately, which at first was awesome, but has kind of turned boring. So I need a new project.” She brings up another holoscreen to reveal an image of the noted celebrity Han Zhi, whose physical beauty stupefies humans of all genders and sexual preferences. Even Abel, who experiences desire only after being touched, finds himself staring at the perfect symmetry of Han Zhi’s face. Virginia sighs. “I’ve been reworking his latest holo to give it a better ending. Why do they even make the sad ones where the lovers don’t end up together? Nobody wants that!”

  This should be Abel’s cue to defend Casablanca, by far his favorite fictional narrative. If Ilsa didn’t leave Rick at the end, the film would lose much of its power. But another memory comes upon Abel too strongly to deny.

  For an instant it’s as if he’s back on his ship, saying good-bye to Noemi forever. Her fighter slid out into space as Abel’s vision blurred with the first tears he ever shed—

  “Abel?” Virginia stands up. She’s a few centimeters taller than him, and her expression is worried as she looks down at him. “Are you okay?”

  “My condition is unchanged.” By this Abel means that it is operationally satisfactory. There’s nothing “okay” about remembering he’ll never see Noemi again.

  “One thing I’ve been asking myself,” Virginia says easily, as though he hadn’t drifted away from their first conversation, “is why you’re so gung-ho about all of this. I mean, I get you being curious, but going super-spy commando at Mansfield Cybernetics parties? That’s pretty risky for plain old robotics research.”

  Abel blinks. He’s never questioned his reasons for vigorously investigating Mansfield’s work. Its necessity seemed self-evident, but he finds he cannot define it. What controls his behavior outside his conscious thoughts is his programming—the programming Mansfield himself installed.

  He will never be completely free of his creator.

  “Directive One,” Abel says. He envisions the multicolored string lights all around them as the guts of a computer, as if they were conversing in the center of his own mechanical brain. “My core command demands my devotion to Burton Mansfield. Even though I can defy him, I remain interested in him. I have a strong need to understand his actions and motivations. I am even… invested in his welfare, and want him to be safe and well.”

  Virginia leans onto her desk, her expression wary. “That doesn’t mean—Abel, you’re not thinking about turning yourself over to him, are you?”

  “Don’t worry, Virginia. I’m in no hurry to die,” Abel says. “As Burton Mansfield knows.”

  With a grin, she holds up her hand for the archaic, obscure human gesture known as a “high five.” Apparently this is a fad on Cray. Abel returns the gesture, but as their palms slap together he gives silent thanks that Harriet and Zayan aren’t here to see it. They’d never stop teasing him.

  Yet it is pleasant even to have people who might tease him.

  Which makes him miss Noemi again. Why is the pain always fresh, as if they had just said good-bye? How long will it take him to heal? Humans talk about “moving on” in ways that suggest the process should begin in weeks, if not days. Five months after Noemi’s departure, Abel still has to consciously steer his thoughts to other topics, daily.

  Maybe human love is different. Maybe it’s weak, as variable as the weather and so as ephemeral as a breeze.

  Abel’s love is not.

  5

  WITHIN FORTY-FOUR HOURS—TWO GENESIS DAYS—THE entire planet is in chaos.

  Not every single person is sick. No disease is that contagious, not even Cobweb. However, more than one in five individuals have come down with the illness, and surely the virus is incubating within others. Noemi, having survived the illness, is immune. That makes her literally the only safe person on her world.

  Everyone else is terrified, and that terror is ripping them apart.

  On the first day, everything goes very still. The markets—and all other public places on Genesis—are closed by decree. It’s a desperate attempt to cut down on infections, but probably it was too late as soon as the first star hit the ground. Noemi spends the whole day looking after Mr. and Mrs. Gatson, who grow more feverish and weak with every passing hour; she feels as if she can do nothing but watch the white spiderweb rash spread across their bodies. That night’s a hungry one, because the emergency ration drop-offs won’t be ready until tomorrow. Noemi eats a solitary dinner of leftover vegetable stew and two cups of coffee, willing herself to stay awake.

  The Gatsons need her. They’ve never welcomed her as a daughter, but they took care of her when she was sick, and she pays her debts. And deep on a level she doesn’t like to admit, she’s glad they finally have to rely on her for a change.

  But on the second day, she’s past any feeling that petty. Nothing is left but sheer terror.

  “Please!” Noemi pleads as she tries to walk Mrs. Gatson through a gathering crowd outside the hospital. “Please, let us through, she needs help—”

  “Why do you think the rest of us are here?” snaps an old man. “Wait your turn!”

  But there’s no such thing as turns, or a line, or any kind of order. The crowd’s panic is so thick in the air Noemi imagines she can feel it, like a vibration in her very nerves. Mrs. Gatson is heavy against her shoulder, barely upright, shivering despite the blanket Noemi wrapped around her shoulders. People bump into them, pushing them roughly from side to side. The hospital’s white walls seem to gleam against the storm-cloud-dark sky, promising hope, but there’s no reaching it through the desperate scrum. Sick people who can’t stand throng the sidewalk, laid out on blankets or just on the grass. The pale rectangles of cloth in their long rows remind her uncomfortably of tombstones in a graveyard. Some of the patients groan or cry; most of them lie quietly. A few are so still that Noemi suspects they’re already dead.

  She remembers how Cobweb feels. Remembers the bone-wrenching ache of it, the chills that swept through her, the hot scratchy dryness behind her eyes.
She’d tried to get to sick bay from her cabin and had instead collapsed in the ship’s corridor, unable to walk another step.

  It was Abel who found her, lifted her up, took such gentle care of her—

  Don’t think about him, she tells herself. Abel can’t help you. You’re on your own.

  “Hang on,” she whispers to Mrs. Gatson, but she doesn’t think the woman can hear her any longer. Eventually, as the first drops of rain start to fall, vehicles pull up to collect the sick. They’re less like ambulances, more like… cargo trucks. The nurses inside look harried and worn; they’re doing their best, but their best isn’t good enough. Noemi has no choice but to let them take Mrs. Gatson away.

  Returning home means hurrying along streets empty of people or vehicles. People have begun hanging red scarves at windows to signal that someone in the house is infected; nearly every home has one. She’s not the only one who keeps looking up at the stormy sky, searching not for signs of thunder or lightning but for Earth’s Damocles ships penetrating Genesis’s atmosphere at last—for fighting mechs descending like fallen angels to claim their world.

  When she gets back to the house, she’s able to bring in some emergency rations. She checks and sees that her messages to Captain Baz have gone unanswered. Official information is all about the plague, with no word on who—if anyone—is patrolling the Genesis Gate. Noemi doesn’t know if the government is refusing to tell them anything, or whether it doesn’t have enough resources left over to even gather the information. None of the possible answers are good.

  In the great room, the faint light from the cloudy sky illuminates the surroundings—almost unchanged from yesterday morning, when Mr. Gatson took ill. The teacups still sit on the edge of the sink. Noemi hasn’t washed them because she badly wants some reminder of normality. Some evidence of regular life.

  Although Mr. Gatson got sick first, he’s not as bad off as his wife. He sits on the low couch near the largest window, staring at the dark sky, a knitted blanket around his shoulders even though fever flushes his face. Either he doesn’t hear Noemi come in or he doesn’t care.

  She has to assume it’s the first one, just in case. “Mr. Gatson?” One long step brings Noemi into his field of vision. “Is there anything you need?”

  “Yes.” His voice quavers. “Tell me about the star.”

  Noemi knows he means Esther’s star. After her death, her body couldn’t be kept aboard Abel’s ship; if they’d been boarded and searched, they no doubt would’ve been arrested for murder. When Noemi rejected the horrifying idea of ejecting Esther’s body into the cold of space, it was Abel who came up with the idea of burying her within the heart of a star—the star of the Kismet system, one that gives heat and light to an entire living world. She still thinks it’s the most beautiful tribute to Esther that could possibly exist.

  Yet the Gatsons never asked about the star before. Noemi doesn’t know whether that’s their rejection of the mode of Esther’s burial, or their reluctance to talk about Esther’s death any more than necessary.

  She goes to the couch and sits beside Mr. Gatson, though she leaves half a meter of distance between them. Habit. “You know the constellation Atar?” That formation of stars is one of the most famous in Genesis’s southern hemisphere. “The brightest star in the base of the cauldron? That’s Kismet’s star. That’s where Esther is.”

  Mr. Gatson leans his head back on the edge of the sofa, gazing up at a sky too cloudy to show them any stars. The faint spiderweb rash on his face is almost invisible in the dimness. “That’s—‘Atar’ is holy fire for the Zoroastrians, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.” Noemi isn’t particularly familiar with that faith, more common on the northern continents. But she looked up a few things after Esther was buried there. “It purifies. It knows guilt or innocence. It’s the divine glory of God.”

  After a long silence, Mr. Gatson says, “Then it’s a good place for her.”

  That’s as close to forgiveness as Noemi’s ever likely to get. She knows better than to respond out loud.

  A rap at the door startles her. Mr. Gatson doesn’t even seem to hear. Noemi hurries to answer it; when she sees a nurse standing there, medkit in hand, the sight is so welcome she almost wonders if she’s imagining it. “Thank God you’re here. But Mrs. Gatson—I shouldn’t have taken her away, I wouldn’t have if I’d known—”

  “I’m sent to help out here while you answer the summons.” The nurse hands her a small dataread—a confidential summons to meet with the Elder Council, immediately.

  Noemi doesn’t travel to the Hall of Elders. Instead, she’s been called to meet with them in an emergency ward.

  “Everything we know about Cobweb,” rasps Darius Akide, from his place in a hospital bed, “we know from you. To whatever extent we’ve been able to respond to this crisis, it’s because your intel prepared us.”

  “That’s not much,” Noemi says. Though she knows in her mind that there’s nothing more she could’ve done, she still feels as though she failed somehow. “Ephraim Dunaway told me the Stronghold doctors figured out I was from Genesis because I was too healthy. Because I responded to Cobweb treatment so quickly. But this disease—it’s destroying us.”

  “You responded to antiviral drugs we don’t have,” Akide says. “Ours are older and, it seems, much less effective against Cobweb.”

  Another elder says, “Earth appears to have made Cobweb more contagious before they sent it to Genesis—and perhaps they’ve made it deadlier, too. Something our drugs can’t treat.”

  “Then we need to—” Noemi stops mid-sentence. The idea is so tantalizing, so liberating, that she can’t give it voice. If she admits it’s even possible, she’ll be admitting how much she wants it. Admitting she wants something means she won’t actually get it. She pushes her mind down another route. “Is it—does my body carry Cobweb antibodies, or something like that? Could they use my blood to synthesize a cure?”

  The silver-haired elder shakes her head. “Our doctors doubt it, and the research would take time Genesis doesn’t have. Earth sent this disease to paralyze us. They could send Damocles ships through at any moment, and we could put up little resistance. Within another few days, we’ll have no ability to resist at all.”

  “We need the better antivirals,” Noemi says. It’s really happening. “You’ll have to send me through the Gate. That’s why you called me here, isn’t it? I’m immune and I’ve got contacts in Remedy who could help us. I’m ready.”

  One thought overwhelms her beyond any others: I’m free!

  Then Noemi wonders what the hell is wrong with her. Genesis is in terrible danger, maybe the worst it has ever faced. The mission she’s going on will be dangerous; surely Earth will be guarding the Genesis Gate closely, which means her chance of capture is high. If she fails, it’s the death of her world, and she’ll actually deserve the hate she’s received.

  She knows all that. She believes it. She’s going to get the antivirals back to Genesis or die trying.

  But then Darius Akide slowly shakes his head. “That would take time we almost certainly don’t have. We must face the inevitable.”

  Nausea twists Noemi’s gut. No.

  “You’re not my first choice of diplomat,” he says with as much humor as he can muster, which isn’t much. The gravity of his words is unmistakable. “But you’re the only individual we know will remain healthy and uninfected.”

  Please, no.

  Akide concludes: “That’s why you must be the one to offer Earth our surrender.”

  The war is over. Noemi’s world is lost.

  The next few hours pass in a blur: Fueling and provisioning her starfighter, and charting her course to the Genesis Gate while scanning all sectors at maximum intensity for any potential mech patrols. Tears periodically blur her eyes, but she keeps going, driving herself on because the first time she stops to think about this, it’s going to kill her.

  On the journey to the Gate, though, there’s nothing to do but think
.

  How could they do it? How could they just give up? Yes, Genesis is stricken, but Earth hasn’t invaded yet. The delay can only be because they want the virus to wreak maximum havoc before the invasion, to make their takeover as easy as possible. That cruel arrogance could be turned to Genesis’s advantage if they’d only try to get the antivirals. I could’ve done it if they had let me. It would’ve been easy!

  Well, maybe not easy. But it would’ve been possible. I’d have reached out to Ephraim, if I could find him—or maybe Riko, if I could figure out where she is—

  —Kismet would be a place to start, if I could—

  I could do it.

  Noemi has been reprimanded for reacting instead of acting. She knows her temper and her impulses don’t always point in the right direction. And what she’s thinking of doing is even more serious than disobeying a military command. She would be making a judgment that will determine the destiny of her entire planet, overruling the Elder Council itself.

  But if Remedy could help her get the antiviral drugs in time… she could save Genesis.

  The Gate beckons. Noemi hasn’t made her decision yet—or at least she tells herself she hasn’t—but she feels like she’ll know what to do the minute she’s on the other side. Time to fly.

  She urges her starfighter forward into the shimmer at the very center of the Gate. The ship hits the event horizon, and reality cracks.

  In an instant straight lines seem to bend, and light varies its brightness from millimeter to millimeter. It’s as if the serene image of her cockpit a moment ago had been turned into a jigsaw puzzle and someone just dumped the pieces on the table all out of order. Noemi’s stomach drops, but she keeps her hands on the controls, full speed ahead.

  For one moment she closes her eyes, just to steady herself. In that moment she recalls going through a Gate for the first time, Abel at her side, his hands sure on the controls. He’d been so arrogant about his skills, so pleased with her fear. And she’d hardly even wanted to look at the thing she would later destroy—